May 16 – 18, 2025
with Darcy Williamson
$435/ Event is Full. Email Darcy to be placed on wait list.
The sap is rising! Medicinal bark is best gathered between April and May, as sap rises. We will travel to several elevations gathering medicinal bark from a wide variety of trees and shrubs. The various barks will have many healing properties — pain relief, cough suppressant, antibiotic, antibacterial, calming.
On Saturday, I will lead our small group on a day’s excursion to harvest a wide variety of barks rich in healing properties. By day’s end we will return to Mavens’ Haven and begin our preparations for the following day.
Sunday, let the fun begin! From what we have harvested, we will make tinctures, salves, liniment, and teas.
Itinerary
Arrive on Friday any time after 2:00 P.M. (Mountain Standard Time). Settle into your accommodation and enjoy the ambiance of the garden and grounds. If the weather permits, a mixed grill with salads and sides will be served in the Garden Pergola at 5:30 P.M. Otherwise, the meal will be served in Mavens’ Haven’s kitchen.
Saturday morning coffee and tea will be available by 8:00 A.M. in the main kitchen, followed by breakfast at 9:00. A sandwich bar will be set up by 9:30 for participants to pack their sack lunch. We will leave for our adventure at 10:00 P.M. and return around 5:00 A.M. Dinner will be served around 6:00 P.M. The sauna will be hot and ready by 7:00 P.M.
Sunday morning coffee and tea will be available by 8:00 A.M. in the main kitchen, followed by breakfast at 9:00. We will begin cleaning and sorting our harvest and have a group discussion on how we want to process each. We will take a break for lunch, which will be a self-serve set up on kitchen island. The rest of the afternoon will be spent finishing our projects. There will be plenty of treasures to take home with you. We will end our day and say our good-byes at 4:30 P.M.
You will receive a follow-up email containing PDF files of the plants discovered and discussed during our Saturday exploration.
All meals include gluten-free options. Aside from milk, we offer nut or oat milk with breakfast. A guest requiring additional substitutions is welcome to bring those to meals. We have additional refrigerator space to hold substitutions.
Attendees have the option to stay Sunday night at the reduced rate of $50 per accommodation.
To hold your space, email [email protected] the following:
Don’t Bark Up the Wrong Tree Registration
Name:
Phone:
Darcy Williamson has taught classes on regional medicinal plants for over fifty years. She is the owner of From the Forest Idaho, has authored over thirty books, and taught 130 apprentices throughout her career. Presentations have included a three-day, hands-on seminar for BSU Osher Lifelong Learning on Boise’s native and invasive medicinal plant species; Sawtooth Botanical Gardens Wind River Medicinal Plants field trip and workshop; presenter at Alberta Herb Gathering at Pigeon Lake, Edmonton, Canada as well as at the Kootenay Herb Conference in Creston, B.C.; and taught regional medicinal plants at Little Priest Tribal College of the Winnebago Tribe in Nebraska.
She has also presented at Sun City Senior Wellness Program, Hilton Head, South Carolina; Urban Wellness utilizing Regional Plants at St. Charles Education and Therapeutic Center, Long Island, New York; Women’s Wellness Conference and St. Lukes Hospital Employee Wellness Program, St. Louis, Missouri; Hanford Nuclear Site, Washington, Employee Wellness Program “Herbal Support for Thyroid and other Organs Affected by Radiation Contamination”; Idaho Association of Naturopathic Convention, including “The Importance of Constituents and Their Proper Applications in Herbal Formulations” Pocatello, Idaho; presentation to the faculty at Smith College, Northampton, MA. “Medicinal Plants of Northampton”; speaker at Shoshoni/Bannock Medicine Gathering at Lava Hot Springs.
During her career as an herbalist Darcy organized and conducted a 10-day Botanical Bicycling Tour of South Connemara, Ireland, as well as conducted two 5-day medicinal plant trips to the Peruvian Amazon, “The Rocky Mountains Meets the Amazon Jungle”, staying with students at the remote Yakumama Lodge.
Darcy has been featured in numerous magazines, appeared in several television interviews, and spoken on numerous radio programs.
